It snuck up on me.

I stepped out of the airport and into the afternoon sunshine.

That space between freedom and responsibility.

$25.06. The total at the gas pump. Full tank. Waynesville to Tybee Island, Georgia. Around 350 miles. As an impending snowstorm crept over the Great Smoky Mountains of Western North Carolina last Thursday, I jumped into my musty, rusty pickup truck and bolted down the highway, en route to sunny skies and crashing waves along the mighty Atlantic Ocean.

Editor’s Note: On Feb. 9, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders won the Democratic primary in New Hampshire. Garret posted a photo of him and Sanders on his Facebook page with a few thoughts on Sanders, who is a longtime popular politician in Garret’s native Champlain Valley (Upstate New York/Vermont). To which, hundreds of people clicked “like” on the post, with many commenting on this image and the man himself.

It ain’t so bad.

Getting older. Tomorrow is my 31st birthday, and as I reflect on my first year of this new decade in my life, I’m finding myself more centered and alive than ever before.

There was a time in my life where I thought being wild would lead to a sense of freedom and purpose. I assumed that spontaneous trips, living alone, drinking good wine, writing long, dark journal entries and dabbling in debauchery would quench an underlying thirst for adventure.

It’s a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Suicide. The one societal topic that makes everyone squirm, conjuring traumatic memories as we think back on those familiar faces no longer with us, but dearly missed.

It’s funny, isn’t it? When you cross paths with folks you haven’t seen in years, and yet you are all still on the same page, where it feels no time has past since your last rendezvous.

My eyes fluttered open and, for a moment, I didn’t know where I was.

The room was familiar. The sheets and blankets were the same. But I wasn’t. As I got out bed at my parent’s house, I realized it had been three years since I was living under this roof, and with one day until my return to Western North Carolina, it was still surreal to be here, and now, in my native Upstate New York.